[wvns] Israel Spits in Bush's Eye
Barak: Israel shouldn't appease U.S. president with one year left
By Mazal Mualem and Aluf Benn
Haaretz Correspondents and News Agencies
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=906114&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1
Defense Minister Ehud Barak this week warned against forsaking Israeli
diplomatic principles to gain favor with the Bush administration.
In statements made to Haaretz, Barak warned against a "withdrawal from
Israeli principles that have stood for 40 years, merely to gain favor
in the eyes of an American president who is leaving office in a year."
Barak also leveled harsh criticism on recent efforts by Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert and Vice Premier Haim Ramon to advance diplomatic progress
with the Palestinian Authority, stating that even if PA Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad wanted to
sign a peace agreement with Israel, they don't have the power to
implement it.
Barak's words paint a strong contrast to statements made by Olmert
speechto a Kadima Party gathering Thursday night where the PM said
Israel "has a partner" in Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
The defense minister attacked Ramon's recently published diplomatic
plan that would set the future border of Israel on the 1967 lines and
would transfer Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem to Palestinian
control.
"Ramon is overreaching and he lacks supervision or self control,"
Barak stated.
Sources close to Ramon came to the vice premier's defense, saying that
his proposal was much more modest than what Barak offered then PA head
Yassir Arafat at Camp David in 2000, adding that Barak until recently
expressed great pride at his willingness to unilaterally withdrawal
from 90% of the West Bank at the peace summit proceeding the second
Intifada.
In security and diplomacy discussions held in recent days to prepare
for November's U.S.-sponsored peace summit in Washington, Barak stated
that the joint declaration with the Palestinians that the two sides
have been working on "must be sufficiently substantive, so that the
Palestinians do not feel humiliated and exploited."
However, Barak also said that "it must be sufficiently general, so
Israelis do not feel like they are suckers who have made substantive
concessions on core issues without receiving anything in return."
The defense minister believes that Israel must avoid presenting
opening views that will be considered binding during later stages of
the negotiations. He is also opposed to including in the joint
declaration a clause stating that the future border between Israel and
the Palestinian state will be based on the 1967 lines. His proposal is
to include less explicit wording that will reiterate United Nations
Security Council Resolution 242.
Barak is also opposed to any mention of UN General Assembly Resolution
194, which the Palestinians use to interpret as international
recognition to their demand for a right of return of refugees.
===
Israel asks U.S. foreign aid be paid in EUROS
FYI - the Euro is now worth about 1.4 US Dollars.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni
Secretary of State Rice has acknowledged a communique from Israeli
foreign minister Tzipi Levni which requests that all foreign aid
payments and loans from the United States be made in Euros rather than
in Dollars. Foreign Minister Levni cited the rapidly declining dollar
and it's disfavor as a world currency as reasons for the request.
"In the spirit of Yom Kippur, the United States will not hold Israel
to any agreements obligating them to accept Dollars as payment for
their foreigh aid. We will translate our obligations into Euros or
whatever currency that best fits Israel's needs" Secretary RIce said
in the Friday, Sept 21 announcement.
"We need to place our Israeli obligations at the top of our national
prioriy list. Israel should not suffer any inconvenience due to
currency fluctuations" said Rice before heading off to Camp David.
A similar request from Egypt was declined last week.
===
Bedouin village faces demolition due to new Jewish neighborhood
Fifty years after moving to the Yattir area, members of the Alqian
Bedouin tribe are in danger of being removed from Attir-Alhiran. The
land is earmarked for a new Jewish neighborhood. In an effort to halt
the eviction and enable the construction of a permanent community for
them, villagers recently revealed a document, once classified as
confidential, proving that it was the state that permitted them to
settle on the land.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=925222&contrassID=1&subContrassID=7
===
A Clear-Eyed Look at the Claims That Israel
Is America's Strategic Ally
by Andrew I. Killgore
http://giwersworld.org/israel/strategic.phtml
The 'opposite test' developed at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in the
1960s. That concept helps describe the near total protection afforded
Israel in the U.S. media today.
Back then, under the guise of fighting corruption, the Iraqi
government appointed committees to control the importation of drugs
and pharmaceuticals. Soon, as bureaucratic inertia inevitably set in,
these products became increasingly difficult to find on the local
market. But the government dealt with the problem by announcing that
drug supplies were plentiful.
So, as even aspirin became scarce, the idea took hold that reality was
the opposite of what the Iraqi government said it was. The
government's announcement of an amnesty for imprisoned Kurds, it was
reckoned, signaled a ruthless new crackdown against Iraq's Kurdish
minority in the north.
In fact there had been corruption before Iraq's drug committees were
appointed, and the conflicting aspirations of the country's 20 percent
Kurdish minority and its Arab majority did present a complex, if not
insoluble, political problem. So there were at least connections
between Iraq's realities and its government's assertions.
Therefore the Iraqi media's tenuous hold on reality compares favorably
with statements in the U.S. media now that Israel is America's
strategic ally. This astonishing assertion is presented without
supporting evidence, analysis, or any connection to reality.
The implication may be that somehow Israel kept communism out of the
Middle East during the Cold War, and that justified the $3 annual
billion, plus, in U.S. foreign aid grants to Israel that have
continued ever since.
When that is questioned, Israel's well-paid U.S. lobbyists and its
media apologists demand that the cost of aiding Israel be compared to
the cost to the United States of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). NATO's role was to keep the Soviet Union out of
Europe, and its cost was several times the cost of helping Israel.
Thus, it is said, the United States got a real bargain in its Israeli
'ally.'
However, neither the U.S. print nor electronic media ever made a
persuasive case that communism was taking hold in the Middle East. The
reason was that no such case could be made.
The media never examined the facts that the Arabs were too
individualistic and too focused on religion to find Soviet
collectivism or atheism attractive. As for the Middle Eastern
countries bordering the Soviet Union, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan,
all had historical reasons for rejecting the Russian bear and anything
it purveyed, including communism. Still, according to U.S. media
friends of Israel, we had 'ally' Israel to thank for keeping communism
out.
Media protection of Israel has reached the 'it never happened' level.
Attributes of strength that a valuable ally might possess were rarely
discussed where Israel is concerned. This would have highlighted
Israel's weaknesses, which included physical size (smaller than Hong
Kong), population (smaller than Burkina Faso, Burundi, Rwanda, or
Cameroon (all countries that few Americans could locate on a map),
paucity of natural resources such as oil (none), a chronically weak
economy requiring huge American subsidies, political instability since
its government does not assure equal protection of the laws to all of
its citizens, and a reputation for human rights violations so bad in
the Arab and Muslim worlds that our aid to Israel reflected adversely
on us with the Muslim one-fifth of humanity.
The superiority of the Israeli military over the Arab countries'
military was justly highlighted. Even here, however, there were
weaknesses. When Egypt and Syria launched coordinated surprise attacks
in 1973 to take back their territory seized and retained by Israel
since 1967, Israel suffered very heavy human and material losses. To
turn the military tide in Israel's favor in that war, the U.S. had to
fly tanks and other heavy equipment directly to the fighting fronts,
stripping our own forces in Europe to do so. Otherwise Israel might
not have survived.
Although Israel's 1982 aggression against Lebanon seemed initially
successful, Lebanese suicide fighters actually drove the Israeli army
out of most of Lebanon in 1983. And our ineffectiveness in halting the
massacre by Israel's Lebanese Maronite allies of 2,000 Palestinians at
Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, after these camps were surrounded by
Israeli forces, reflected very badly on the United States.
A Lack of Trust
In the 1990-1991 Gulf war the United States refused to provide Israel
with the daily electronic 'friend or foe' code used by U.S. and other
coalition aircraft flying over Iraq. The reason was that U.S.
commanders didn't trust Israel to refrain from settling its own scores
with Iraq and thus breaking up the 35-nation coalition put together by
the United States and its Arab allies.
For further understanding of American media protection of Israel, the
'memory hole' described by author and social critic George Orwell in
his futuristic novel 1984 might be linked to the 'opposite test.'
Historians know that Israel attacked the USS Liberty in 1967, killing
34 Americans and wounding 171. Historians also know that Israeli
agents firebombed American diplomatic and cultural missions in Cairo
and Alexandria in 1954 in the infamous "Lavon Affair" (named after
Israeli Defense Minister Pinhas Lavon), to make it falsely appear that
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser was the culprit. But these and
other such incidents that reflect unfavorably on Israel's value as an
'ally' have disappeared down the 'memory hole' of the U.S. media.
In fact, U.S. media protection of Israel goes beyond either the
'opposite test'' or the 'memory hole.' It has reached the 'it never
happened' level, based upon the dictum that if something isn't
reported in the American media, it's not reality. Thus an event the
U.S. media doesn't report becomes a non-event, and partisans of Israel
get away with branding any account of such an event a lie. Thus
American public opinion is manipulated to Israel's benefit, not by the
Israeli media but by ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, National Public Radio and, to
only a slightly lesser extent, The New York Times, Wall Street
Journal, The Washington Post and other national dailies which once
were called America's 'newspapers of record.'
Think about this when you read or hear about the next great victory
for Middle East peace. And then apply the 'opposite test.'
Mr. Andrew I. Killgore, a former US ambassador to the state of Qatar
*********************************************************************
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